High Citadel / Landslide

by Desmond Bagley

  Rohde looked up at the pass. ‘We lost height in crossing the glacier; we still have to ascend between five and six hundred metres to get to the top.’

  Sixteen hundred to two thousand feet, Forester translated silently. He followed Rohde’s gaze. To their left was the glacier, oozing imperceptibly down the mountain and scraping itself by a rock wall. Above, the clean sweep of snow was broken by a line of cliffs halfway up to the top of the pass. ‘Do we have to climb that?’ he demanded.

  Rohde scrutinized the terrain carefully, then shook his head. ‘I think we can go by the cliffs there—on the extreme right. That will bring us on top of the cliffs. We will bivouac there tonight.’

  He put his hand in his pocket and produced the small leather bag of coca quids he had compounded back in the camp. ‘Hold out your hand,’ he said. ‘You will need these now.’

  He shook a dozen of the green squares into Forester’s palm and Forester put one into his mouth and chewed it. It had an acrid and pungent taste which pleasantly warmed the inside of his mouth. ‘Not too many,’ warned Rohde. ‘Or your mouth will become inflamed.’

  It was useless giving them to Peabody. He had relapsed into his state of automatism and followed Rohde like a dog on a lead, obedient to the tugs on the rope. As Rohde set out on the long climb up to the cliffs he followed, mechanically going through the proper climbing movements as though guided by something outside himself. Forester, watching him from behind, hoped there would be no crisis; as long as things went well Peabody would be all right, but in an emergency he would certainly break, as O’Hara had prophesied.

  He did not remember much of that long and toilsome climb. Perhaps the coca contributed to that, for he found himself in much the same state as he imagined Peabody to be in. Rhythmically chewing the quid, he climbed automatically, following the trail broken by the indefatigable Rohde.

  At first the snow was thick and crusted, and then, as they approached the extreme right of the line of cliffs, the slope steepened and the snow cover became thinner and they found that under it was a sheet of ice. Climbing in these conditions without crampons was difficult, and, as Rohde confessed a little time afterwards, would have been considered impossible by anyone who knew the mountains.

  It took them two hours to get above the rock cliffs and to meet a great disappointment. Above the cliffs and set a few feet back was a continuous ice wall over twenty feet high, surmounted by an overhanging snow cornice. The wall stretched across the width of the pass in an unbroken line.

  Forester, gasping for breath in the thin air, looked at it in dismay. We’ve had it, he thought; how can we get over this? But Rohde, gazing across the pass, did not lose hope. He pointed. ‘I think the ice wall is lower there in the middle. Come, but stay away from the edge of the cliff.’

  They started out along the ledge between the ice wall and the edge of the cliff. At first the ledge was narrow, only a matter of feet, but as they went on it became broader and Rohde advanced more confidently and faster. But he seemed worried. ‘We cannot stay here,’ he said. ‘It is very dangerous. We must get above this wall before nightfall.’

  ‘What’s the hurry?’ asked Forester. ‘If we stay here, the wall will shelter us from the wind—it’s from the west and I think it’s rising.’

  ‘It is,’ replied Rohde. He pointed upwards. ‘That is what I worry about—the cornice. We cannot stay below it—it might break away—and the wind in the west will build it to breaking-point. It is going to snow—look down.’

  Forester looked into the dizzying depths below the cliffs and saw a gathering greyness of mist. He shivered and retreated to safety, then followed the shambling figure of Peabody.

  It was not five minutes later when he felt his feet suddenly slide on the ice. Frantically he tried to recover his balance but to no effect, and he found himself on his back, swooping towards the edge of the cliff. He tried to brake himself with his hands and momentarily saw the smear of blood on the ice as, with a despairing cry, he went over the edge.

  Rohde, hearing the cry and feeling the tug of Peabody on the rope, automatically dug the ice-axe firmly into the ice and took the strain. When he turned his head he saw only Peabody scrabbling at the edge of the cliff, desperately trying to prevent himself from being pulled off. He was screaming incoherently, and of Forester there was no sign.

  Forester found the world wheeling crazily before his eyes, first a vast expanse of sky and a sudden vista of valleys and mountains half obscured by wreaths of mist, then the grey rock close by as he spun and dangled on the end of the rope, suspended over a sheer drop of three hundred feet on to the steep snow slopes beneath. His chest hurt and he found that the rope had worked itself under his armpits and was constricting his ribs. From above he heard the terrified yammerings of Peabody.

  With a heave Rohde cracked the muscles of his back and hoped the rotten rope would not break. He yelled to Peabody, ‘Pull on the rope—get him up.’ Instead he saw the flash of steel and saw that Peabody had a clasp-knife and was sawing at the rope where it went over the edge of the cliff.

  Rohde did not hesitate. His hand went to his side and found the small axe they had taken from the Dakota. He drew it from his belt, reversing it quickly so that he held it by the handle. He lifted it, poised, for a second, judging his aim, and then hurled it at Peabody’s head.

  It struck Peabody squarely on the nape of the neck, splitting his skull. The terrified yelping stopped and from below Forester was aware of the startling silence and looked up. A knife dropped over the edge of the cliff and the blade cut a gash in his cheek before it went spinning into the abyss below, and a steady drip of blood rained on him from above.

  SIX

  O’Hara had lost his flask.

  He thought that perhaps he had left it in the pocket of the leather jacket he had given Forester, but then he remembered going through the pockets first. He looked about the shelter, trying not to draw attention to himself, but still could not find it and decided that it must be up at the camp.

  The loss worried him unreasonably. To have a full flask at his side had comforted him; he knew that whenever he wanted a drink then it was there ready to hand, and because it was there he had been able, in some odd way, to resist the temptation. But now he felt an aching longing in the centre of his being for a drink, for the blessed relief of alcohol and the oblivion it would bring.

  It made him very short-tempered.

  The night had been quiet. Since the abortive attempt to burn the bridge the previous evening, nothing had happened. Now, in the dawn light, he was wondering whether it would be safe to bring down the trebuchet. His resources in manpower were slender and to bring the trebuchet from the camp would leave the bridge virtually defenceless. True, the enemy was quiet, but that was no guarantee of future inactivity. He had no means of telling how long it would take them to obtain more timber and to transport it.

  It was the common dilemma of the military man—trying to guess what the enemy was doing on the other side of the hill and balancing guesses against resources.

  He heard the clatter of a stone and turned his head to find Benedetta coming towards him. He waved her back and slid down from his observation post. ‘Jenny has made coffee,’ she said. ‘I will keep watch. Has anything happened?’

  He shook his head. ‘Everything’s quiet. They’re still there, of course; if you stick your neck out you’ll get your head blown off—so be careful.’ He paused; he badly needed to discuss his problems with someone else, not to shrug off responsibility but to clarify the situation in his own mind. He missed Forester.

  He told Benedetta what he was thinking and she said immediately, ‘But, of course, I will come up to the camp.’

  ‘I might have known,’ he said unreasonably. ‘You won’t be separated from your precious uncle.’

  ‘It is not like that,’ she said sharply. ‘All you men are needed to bring down this machine, but what good can Jenny and I do down here? If we are attacked we can only run; and it does not
take two to watch. Four can bring the machine from the camp quicker than three—even though one of them is a woman. If the enemy attacks in force Jenny will warn us.’

  He said slowly, ‘We’ll have to take the risk, of course; we’ve got no choice. And the sooner we move the better.’

  ‘Send Jenny down quickly,’ said Benedetta. ‘I’ll wait for you at the pond.’

  O’Hara went up to the shelter and was glad of the mug of steaming coffee that was thrust into his hands. In between gulps he rapidly detailed his plan and ended by saying, ‘It puts a great deal on your shoulders, Jenny. I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ she said quietly.

  ‘You can have two shots—no more,’ he said. ‘We’ll leave both bows cocked for you. If they start to work on the bridge, fire two bolts and then get up to the camp as fast as you can. With luck, the shots will slow them down enough for us to get back in time to fight them off. And for God’s sake don’t fire them both from the same place. They’re getting smart over there and they have all our favourite posts spotted.’

  He surveyed the small group. ‘Any questions?’

  Aguillar stirred. ‘So I am to return to the camp. I feel I am a drag on you; so far I have done nothing—nothing.’

  ‘God in heaven!’ exclaimed O’Hara. ‘You’re our kingpin—you’re the reason for all this. If we let them get you we’ll have fought for nothing.’

  Aguillar smiled slowly. ‘You know as well as I do that I do not matter any more. True, it is me they want, but they cannot let you live as well. Did not Doctor Armstrong point out that very fact?’

  Armstrong removed his pipe from his mouth. ‘That might be so, but you’re in no condition to fight,’ he said bluntly. ‘And while you’re down here you are taking O’Hara’s mind off his job. You’d be better out of the way up at the camp where you can do something constructive, like making new bolts.’

  Aguillar bent his head. ‘I stand corrected and rightly so. I am sorry, Señor O’Hara, for making more trouble than I need.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said O’Hara awkwardly. He felt sorry for Aguillar; the man had courage, but courage was not enough—or perhaps it was not the right kind of courage. Intellectual bravery was all very well in its place.

  It was nearer three hours than two before they arrived at the camp, the slowness being caused by Aguillar’s physical weakness, and O’Hara was fretting about what could have happened at the bridge. At least he had heard no rifle fire, but the wind was blowing away from the mountains and he doubted if he would have heard it anyway. This added to his tension.

  Willis met them. ‘Did Forester and Rohde get away all right—and our good friend Peabody?’ asked O’Hara.

  ‘They left before I awoke,’ said Willis. He looked up at the mountains. ‘They should be at the mine by now.’

  Armstrong circled the trebuchet, making pleasurable noises. ‘I say, you’ve done a good job here, Willis.’

  Willis coloured a little. ‘I did the best I could in the time we had—and with what we had.’

  ‘I can’t see how it can possibly work,’ said O’Hara.

  Willis smiled. ‘Well, it’s stripped down for transport. It’s more or less upside-down now; we can wheel it down the road on the axle.’

  Armstrong said, ‘I was thinking of the Russo-Finnish war; a bit out of my field, I know, but the Finns were in very much the same case as we are—dreadfully under-equipped and using their ingenuity to the utmost. I seem to remember they invented the Molotov Cocktail.’

  O’Hara’s mind leapt immediately to the remaining drum of paraffin and to the empty bottles he had seen lying round the camp. ‘My God, you’ve done it again,’ he said. ‘Gather together all the bottles you can find.’

  He strode across to the hut where the paraffin was stored, and Willis called after him, ‘It’s open—I was in there this morning.’

  He pushed open the door and paused as he saw the crate of liquor. Slowly he bent down and pulled out a bottle. He cradled it in his hand, then held it up to the light; the clear liquid could have been water; but he knew the deception. This was the water of Lethe which brought blessed forgetfulness, which untied the knots in his soul. His tongue crept out to lick his lips.

  He heard someone approaching the hut and quickly put the bottle on a shelf, pushing it behind a box and out of sight. When Benedetta came in he was bending over the paraffin drum, unscrewing the cap.

  She was laden with empty bottles. ‘Willis said you wanted these. What are they for?’

  ‘We’re making bombs of a sort. We’ll need some strips of cloth to make wicks and stoppers; see if you can find something.’

  He began to fill the bottles and presently Benedetta came back with the cloth and he showed her how to stuff the necks of the bottles, leaving an easily ignitable wick. ‘Where are the others?’ he asked.

  ‘Willis had an idea,’ she said. ‘Armstrong and my uncle are helping him.’

  He filled another bottle. ‘Do you mind leaving your uncle up here alone?’

  ‘What else can we do?’ she asked. She bent her head. ‘He has always been alone. He never married, you know. And then he has known a different kind of loneliness—the loneliness of power.’

  ‘And have you been lonely—since…’

  ‘Since my family were killed?’ She looked up and there was something in her dark eyes that he could not fathom. ‘Yes, I have. I joined my uncle and we were two lonely people together in foreign countries.’ Her lips curved. ‘I think you are also a lonely man, Tim.’

  ‘I get along,’ he said shortly, and wiped his hands on a piece of rag.

  She stood up. ‘What will you do when we leave here?’

  ‘Don’t you mean, if we leave here?’ He stood too and looked down at her upraised face. ‘I think I’ll move on; there’s nothing for me in Cordillera now. Filson will never forgive me for bending one of his aeroplanes.’

  ‘Is there nothing you want to stay for?’

  Her lips were parted and on impulse he bent his head and kissed her. She clung to him and after a long moment he sighed. A sudden wonder had burst upon him and he said in surprise, ‘Yes, I think there is something to stay for.’

  They stood together quietly for a few minutes, not speaking. It is in the nature of lovers to make plans, but what could they plan for? So there was nothing to say.

  At last Benedetta said, ‘We must go, Tim. There is work to do.’

  He released her. ‘I’ll see what the others are doing. You’d better throw the booze out of the liquor crate and put the paraffin bottles in it; we can strap it on to the trebuchet.’

  He walked out of the hut and up to the other end of the camp to see what was happening. Halfway there he stopped in deep thought and cursed quietly. He had at last recognized the strange look in Benedetta’s eyes. It had been compassion.

  He took a deep breath, then straightened his shoulders and walked forward again, viciously kicking at a stone. He heard voices to his left and tramped over to the hillside, where he saw Willis, Armstrong and Aguillar grouped round an old cable drum.

  ‘What’s all this?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘Insurance,’ said Armstrong cheerfully. ‘In case the enemy gets across the bridge.’

  Willis gave another bang with the rock he was holding and O’Hara saw he had hammered a wedge to hold the drum in position. ‘You know what this is,’ he said. ‘It’s one of those wooden drums used to transport heavy cable—looks like a big cotton reel, doesn’t it?’

  It did indeed look like a cotton reel, eight feet in diameter. ‘Well?’ said O’Hara.

  ‘The wood is rotten, of course—it must have been standing in the open for years,’ said Willis. ‘But it’s heavy and it will roll. Take a few steps down the hill and tell me what you see.’

  O’Hara walked down the hill and came to a steep drop, and found he was overlooking a cutting, blasted when the road was being made. Willis said from behind him, ‘The drum is out of sight of
the road. We wait until a jeep or a truck is coming up, then we pull away the chocks and with a bit of luck we cause a smash and block the road.’

  O’Hara looked back at Aguillar, whose grey face told of the exertions he had made. He felt anger welling up inside him and jerked his head curtly to Willis and Armstrong. He walked out of earshot of Aguillar, then said evenly, suppressing his anger, ‘I think it would be a good idea if we didn’t go off half-cocked on independent tracks.’

  Willis looked surprised and his face flushed. ‘But—’

  O’Hara cut him short. ‘It’s a bloody good idea, but you might have had some consultation about it. I could have helped to get the drum down into position and the old man could have filled paraffin bottles. You know he’s got a heart condition, and if he drops dead on us those swine on the other side of the river have won.’ He tapped Willis on the chest. ‘And I don’t intend to let that happen if I have to kill you, me and every other member of this party to get Aguillar away to safety.’

  Willis looked shocked. ‘Speak for yourself, O’Hara,’ he said angrily. ‘I’m fighting for my own life.’

  ‘Not while I’m in command, you’re not. You’ll bloody well obey orders and you’ll consult me on everything you do.’

  Willis flared up. ‘And who put you in command?’

  ‘I did,’ said O’Hara briefly. He stared at Willis. ‘Want to make an issue of it?’

  ‘I might,’ said Willis tightly.

  O’Hara stared him down. ‘You won’t,’ he said with finality.

  Willis’s eyes flickered away. Armstrong said quietly, ‘It would be a good idea if we didn’t fight among ourselves.’ He turned to Willis. ‘O’Hara is right, though; we shouldn’t have let Aguillar push the drum.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Willis impatiently. ‘But I don’t go for this death-or-glory stuff.’

  ‘Look,’ said O’Hara. ‘You know what I think? I think I’m a dead man as I stand here right now. I don’t think we’ve a hope in hell of stopping those communist bastards crossing the bridge; we might slow them down but we can’t stop them. And once they get across they’ll hunt us down and slaughter us like pigs—that’s why I think I’m a dead man. It’s not that I particularly like Aguillar, but the communists want him and I’m out to stop them—that’s why I’m so tender of him.’